News That Stays News

Why We Have Medical Malpractice Suits February 2, 2011

In China, an absence of law makes people take revenge into their own hands.

Credits: China Real Time Report

How to Lie with Statistics February 1, 2011

1. Maybe all that whinging about rounding an 89.4 up to an A- has had an impact. Students who are taking the New York Regents exam in History and Government, which they must pass to obtain a high school diploma, are 14 times as likely to get a 65 (the passing score) as they are to get a 64.

2. A geological statistician breaks the lottery.

Credits: The Browser

China and Egypt January 31, 2011

1. The New Yorker evaluates the claim that Tahrir Square will be the new Tiananmen.

2. An inner-city teacher on the limits of modern love:

This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

Credits: The Browser, China Real Time Report

Graduate School Admissions January 29, 2011

Thanks to the good folks at College Confidential, we have here a fascinating trove of admissions statistics. The best information is from Duke, though we also have some data from Princeton.

Some numbers:

Duke Statistics Department- 7% acceptance rate

Matriculants:

589 Verbal GRE

798 Quantitative GRE

3.8 Undergraduate GPA

74% complete their PhDs, and the median time to completion is 4.7 years. Of the 52 graduates between 2000 and 2010, 23 (about 44%) are in tenure-track positions.

On the other hand, for the East Asian Studies Master’s Program, 71% were accepted, 9% decided to enroll, and we have average GRE scores of 601V/651Q, and an average undergraduate GPA of 3.6.

How to Soak the Rich January 29, 2011

1. A history of taxation, and a how-to from Dilbert creator Scott Adams.

2. Who was worse- Hitler or Stalin? We have a better idea now that the Cold War is over.

3. Atul Gawande tells us how we can better serve the neediest patients in American health care.

4. David Bromwich says that Mario Cuomo’s 1984 keynote address was the best speech by a democrat in the last 30 years. Seeing it now is strange.

Credits: The Browser

Refighting the Second World War January 27, 2011

1. A British journalist wonders how much the French could have done differently in 1936.

2. Is programmatic art somehow inferior? An argument against historical fiction (and cinema).

3. Amy Chua, in cartoons.

Credits: The Browser

The Dickensian Aspect January 26, 2011

1. An inheritance saga worthy of the Victorians is taking place in Hong Kong, as the four families of casino billionaire Stanley Ho stake their claims to his fortune.

2. Brooklyn vegetarian goes to White Castle on an anthropological mission.

3. n+1 puts together one of the better bits of theorizing about video games.

4. A pitcher for the Royals decides to retire and forgo $12 million in guaranteed money because

“When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it,” Meche said this week, by phone from Lafayette, La. “Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.”

5. A long story about what it’s like to work with Julian Assange. Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the New York Times, kisses and tells.

Credits: The Browser

LINKED January 24, 2011

1. Someone finally complains about egregious Congressional naming habits- i.e. USA PATRIOT Act being actually the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” Act.

2. NYT paywall is going up next month. Tragedy, or Freedom?

3. How did China acquire stealth technology so fast? This AP article says that after a F-117 was shot down during the Kosovo war,

The wreckage was strewn over a wide area of flat farmlands, and civilians collected the parts — some the size of small cars — as souvenirs.

“At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers,” says Adm. Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia’s military chief of staff during the Kosovo war.

“We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies … and to reverse-engineer them,” Domazet-Loso said in a telephone interview.

A senior Serbian military official confirmed that pieces of the wreckage were removed by souvenir collectors, and that some ended up “in the hands of foreign military attaches.”

The New Yorker Piles On January 24, 2011

By reviewing Amy Chua.

Browsings January 23, 2011

1. The low moral expectations in Italian politics, revealed by the New York Times.

2. A profile of Xi Jinping, China’s next paramount leader.

3. The confidence man who pretended to be a Jesuit priest and convinced museums to accept his paintings talks to a reporter.

4. Britain is now run by the parents of young children. What does it mean?

5. An ambitious investigative piece in the Washington Post about two guns that were ultimately used to kill police. The Post also published a summary article.